Windows Vista and the Eight-year Long Beta
Sounds like the name of a serialized movie series, doesn’t it? Sorry…no Indiana Jones for Microsoft! Buck stops with the Windows 7 beta in my opinion.
So I tried out the beta a bit and found it to be, umm, interesting. That’s really the only word I can describe it with. Compelling? No, not really. Just interesting.
Is it faster and perkier than Vista? Well, yeah, and you would hope that it would be after Microsoft spent the better part of five years developing Vista. Certainly they learned something out of that experience.
The real question is: Is there anything that really sticks out that makes it better than Vista? Well, yes and no. The speed is the part that really makes it better. Other than that, most of the changes are under the surface and thus there isn’t really anything that is really new about Windows 7 yet. Unless Microsoft plans on introducing new features in future builds, not a whole lot to talk about.
Aside from a bundle of little things scattered here and there, one feature that does stick out is the updated taskbar. I played around with it and concur with Adrian Kingsley-Hughes on the changes with the taskbar:
Oddly enough, the first thing that you’re likely to notice about Windows 7 is also the bit that I like the least. The new revamped taskbar is visually very interesting (and certainly a lot easier to use at higher screen resolutions that the Vista or XP taskbar), but it tries to do too much and as such comes across as kludgey and counter-intuitive. One failure is that it’s hard to tell the difference between apps that are running and shortcuts that have been pinned to the taskbar. It also incorporates the new Jump Lists feature which acts as a context-sensitive menu for applications. Problem is that there’s very little rhyme or reason to what to expect from Jump Lists, making them awkward to use in the real world.
Yep, that was pretty much what I though. The functionality kind of has a thrown-together feel about it, as if they did it only to compete with Apple. Take a look:
The taskbar gets even more confusing when you have more than one windows open for a given application. The icons used to indicate a stack of windows open for a single application is kind of obvious but still not clear. It took me a few seconds to realize what the hell was going on with it.
The context menus above feel like they’re taken directly out of the Mac desktop. It’s as if they looked at Leopard and said “Why don’t we have that?”.
In the end, I found absolutely nothing compelling that would make me want to switch back to Windows. Nothing. And that’s part of Microsoft’s problem. Unless they scrap what they got and completely start from scratch, they’re never going to have anything that is remotely capable of being highly competitive with the Mac. Microsoft has to re-invent themselves to compete.
Keep in mind this is coming from someone who used Windows for well over 10 years. I was also an IT administrator for a couple of architectural firms and have a lot of experience supporting Windows desktops and servers. Two years ago, like many other avid PC users, I was skeptical of how good a Mac really was. It wasn’t until I picked one up and use one for a good length of time till I realized just how good it was. Fast forward to today and I don’t want to use anything but a Mac. Granted, I also use Linux quite a bit but the Mac is my desktop of choice for everyday use.
Microsoft has a lot of work to do to Windows 7 if they plan to catchup with Apple. Personally, I don’t see Windows 7 being all that much better than Vista when it comes out. Doesn’t seem realistic that Microsoft will be able to pull a rabbit out of their hat in less than a year. After all, it’s not like Microsoft is all that good at magic tricks anyways.
In the end, what I learned was that Windows 7 feels more like a continuation on the development of Vista. Which makes Vista more or less an eight-year long beta. Goodie!
Tags: vista, windows7
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